Time Frame

by Douglas E. Richards

  It was time to act. Now or never.

  “Zhang, you know your pilot has only a few minutes to live, right?” said Blake.

  “What’s your point?” came the curt reply.

  “Follow my lead,” said Blake as he moved quietly toward the enforcer’s position, deciding his only hope was to use deception, to count on being underestimated. “When I shoot at you, pretend to die. Then lie low and wait for an opportunity.”

  “I don’t do theater,” said Zhang bluntly.

  “Well I do!” spat Blake. “And it’s our only chance. I can turn the tables. Trust me.”

  “Even if you do, their forces in the terminal will cut us down before we get to the woods.”

  “One miracle at a time,” said Blake as he made his way toward Zhang and the pilot. “Play dead when I shoot at you,” he insisted, coming up behind the pilot who was now slumped against the truck, no longer even going through the motions of returning fire.

  Not waiting for agreement, Blake shoved the pilot roughly past Zhang and into view of the four remaining assailants, shooting the pilot in the head the moment he became visible. Blake was sickened by having to execute a helpless man from behind, but it was an ugly necessity, and he had only hastened the man’s death by a matter of minutes.

  Before the dead pilot even hit the runway, Blake changed his aim and fired at Zhang, who played his role to perfection, after all, falling forward into a trailing pool of the pilot’s blood, a third of his body visible to the enemy. He twitched twice and then remained perfectly still.

  For someone who didn’t do theater, Zhang could have won a Tony Award.

  Blake walked slowly out from behind the truck, visibly shaking, both of his hands raised above his head, including the one still holding the Sig Sauer.

  He dropped the gun as though he didn’t realize it was still in his hand, as though it were a repulsive cockroach that both disgusted and terrified him. “I surrender,” he said in English, hoping that one among the group could translate for the others, not that his raised hands and panicked expression needed much in the way of translation. “Don’t shoot.”

  20

  Blake sighed. This wasn’t the first time he had been forced to play a panicked civilian to try to stay alive, and he was getting more than sick of it.

  “Please!” he pleaded when there was no response to his declaration of surrender, making a face as though he were on the verge of bursting into tears. “I shot their last two soldiers for you,” he added, gesturing with his head toward the fallen pilot and Zhang, who was still playing possum.

  If the pilot’s exploding head hadn’t sold this ruse, nothing would. After seeing Blake shoot one man from behind at point-blank range, the Shui Fong attackers would have little reason to believe he hadn’t done the same with the second.

  “Please,” said Blake again, his voice thin and whiny, “I’m trying to help.”

  He stumbled forward toward the four assailants, aware that he was now at their mercy and bracing himself for the end. But instead of filling him with holes, all four stepped out from behind their cover, guns extended toward him, and rapidly closed the distance between them.

  “Frisk him!” ordered the tallest of the four in Chinese, which Blake’s phone dutifully translated and sent to the comm in his ear.

  Two of the men frisked him roughly, finding nothing but his phone, which they left in his possession, thinking it harmless. And why not? They had ringed the airport with cell signal disruptors, after all, ensuring no outbound calls could be made.

  For the first time since the battle had begun, Blake was glad he hadn’t removed more items from the green duffel bag. If one wanted to play the freaked-out helpless civilian, the reluctant killer who had only succeeded by sneaking up behind his victims and shooting them at can’t-miss range, it wasn’t ideal to be armed to the teeth.

  After rapid cross talk in Chinese, the tall leader identified the shortest of the group as the best English speaker among them, and turned him into his spokesman. Blake concentrated on not reacting to anything they said to each other, not wanting them to know he could understand.

  “Find out if he’s an American,” ordered the leader.

  “Are you American?” asked the designated translator in English.

  Blake nodded, trying to force himself to tear up, which he wasn’t quite able to manage. Instead, he quivered his chin, something he had seen television and movie actors do before sobbing. “Don’t hurt me,” he pleaded. “I can help you. I know details of Sun Yee On’s inner workings. Now that you’ve started a war with them, you need me. I can be a huge asset.”

  “Impossible!” said the group’s leader in Chinese. “How would an American know the first thing about Sun Yee On’s activities in China?”

  “He could not, Enforcer Liang,” said the short translator. “But one has to wonder how he got these men to trust him enough that he could sneak up behind them.”

  “Ask him!” demanded the leader, apparently named Liang. “Find out why he’s here.”

  “What are you doing here?” demanded the shorter man in English.

  “The Sun Yee On Triad is a growing menace inside America,” replied Blake. “The US has pretended to partner with them to get intel in China. But it’s a trick. We’re really piecing together an elaborate map of the organization. To give to Chinese authorities.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “So they can destroy this Triad in China. Once they kill the tree here, at its roots, we can chop off the branches in America and they’ll never grow back.”

  When all attention was focused on the interpreter, who was relaying the gist of this response to his associates, Blake risked communication with Zhang. “When I fall to my knees,” he whispered rapidly in English, “fire.”

  He waited for any sign the four men had noticed this whisper, and found none.

  Now it was all up to Zhang. He just prayed Sun Yee On’s top enforcer was as good as he thought.

  Blake’s luck was holding—so far. The men he was facing should never have accepted this situation at face value. They should have planted a bullet in each fallen adversary’s head for good measure. Blake had been on too many battlefields, too many counterterrorism Ops, to ever make this mistake. You only had to be surprised once by someone rising from the dead to attack before you made certain those you hadn’t personally killed were truly deceased.

  The translator finished relaying Blake’s words, and after a brief discussion among the four men, the short Chinese spokesman eyed Blake in disdain. “You can’t really expect us to believe you’re an operative,” he spat. “I mean, look at you,” he added, “your display of fear is a disgrace.”

  “I am an operative,” insisted Blake, careful to still seem terrified. “Why else would I be here? I’m a logistics expert. I’m pretending to work with Sun Yee On, but I’m really planting bugs in their facilities. They would smell a soldier. But not someone like me.”

  After Blake’s answer was translated into Chinese, Liang grew visibly angry, moved forward, and shoved the barrel of his gun against Blake’s elbow. He turned to the man doing the translations. “Tell this coward I don’t trust a word he says!” he shouted. “That if he doesn’t tell me the truth, he’ll never bend his arm again. Tell him!”

  The short interpreter did as instructed.

  “Please,” blubbered Blake. “I am telling you the truth. Please don’t hurt me,” he pleaded.

  Blake braced himself and then fell to his knees in supplication, as though begging for his life, delivering the promised signal to his enforcer ally.

  Without hesitation, Zhang snatched up a gun and fired from his position on the ground, taking out two of the four men before they even knew he was alive.

  Blake, ready for this opening, burst upright from his knees and used a martial arts move to twist the gun from Liang’s outstretched hand with a speed and purpose that was truly extraordinary. The instant he controlled the gun he whipped it toward Liang’s
last remaining associate, a seamless continuation of his initial move made with the fluidity of a dancer. The man was swinging his gun around to shoot Blake, but the American beat him to the punch, planting two rounds in his head just as he was about to pull the trigger.

  Blake dropped to the ground even as he was squeezing off the second shot, instinctively aware that Zhang would be ready to take his own shot. Sure enough, the moment Blake wasn’t in the line of fire, Zhang put one round through Liang’s neck and one through his head, and the man slammed into the concrete runway like a felled tree.

  Blake rushed to Zhang’s position and took a quick survey of his surroundings. Sure enough, Liang had been the last of the Shui Fong soldiers. At least for the moment.

  Blake reached down and took Zhang’s hand, helping to pull him up from the puddle of blood. The enforcer’s left leg was still adding to the total.

  “Let’s go,” said Blake when Zhang was on his feet, favoring his right leg, as expected. “Help me disconnect the ramp,” he added, gesturing to the back of the semi. “Then you can drive us out of here.”

  They quickly managed to dislocate the heavy ramp and drop it to the concrete runway. The instant this was complete, Zhang moved toward the cab as quickly as he could in his hobbled condition.

  Blake was preparing to enter the trailer and roll down the door when another barrage of gunfire pounded against his eardrums, coming from the vicinity of the terminal buildings to the north. About twelve Shui Fong soldiers, who had no doubt seen Blake and Zhang turn the tables on their associates from afar, were moving toward them, laying down another dense curtain of fire.

  They were still too distant to achieve any level of accuracy, but several stray bullets found Zhang as he was climbing into the cab, and he fell back down onto the runway, dead. Blake took a bullet to his left arm as he was entering the trailer, but it only grazed him and wouldn’t cause more than a minor nuisance.

  Blake ignored the corpses of the two workmen who had installed the fake Sub-Zero inside the truck, and the slick red lake their pooled blood had created, and quickly took stock of his situation. If he now tried to reach the cab he would be cut to ribbons. The woods were far enough away that attempting a mad dash to the tree line would be equally suicidal. He would be out in the open for too long, and there was too much firepower concentrated against him. Even if he somehow made it, the forest extended for more than ten miles, and he’d be hunted like a dog until Shui Fong finally managed to kill him.

  He only had one option left, one that he hadn’t been able to use on Liang and his men because they had been too close to his own position. But the men coming for him now were not too close. At least not yet.

  “K-1,” he yelled hastily, “confirm that you’re receiving this.”

  “Confirmed,” said the outer kettle supercomputer into Blake’s ear, responding to the name he had given it.

  “Commence time travel on my order,” he said.

  He risked peeking his head around the edge of the open trailer to make a quick estimate of the mob’s position and closing speed in the dimming light. He guessed the throng of men, still firing, still slowly closing in, were a healthy percentage of a football field away, maybe eighty yards—a good two hundred forty feet. Good. Far enough away that he and the truck might both survive if he acted quickly.

  “Prepare to send K-2 one hundred thirty-five microseconds into the past,” continued Blake. “Set the polarity so that it lands due north of your current position. If, however, after I’ve given you the command to proceed, you detect another dark energy signature in the vicinity, you are to abort time travel immediately.”

  Blake was so well versed in the strange vagaries of time travel he didn’t even need to pause to check the logic. The outer kettle would send the inner kettle three increments of forty-five microseconds into the past. Because the inner kettle, K-2, would come from the future, from a position the Earth had moved to, it would land one hundred seventy-four feet away. When it arrived in the past, however, one version of the inner kettle would still be inside the semi, an instant away from traveling in time.

  But when K-1 detected the presence of the kettle to the north, arriving from the future, it would follow Blake’s order and now abort, never sending the inner kettle back in the first place. Despite this, the local universe would reset—accepting the existence of the new kettle in its midst from a frame in the future without any fuss.

  “Understood and acknowledged,” said the computer.

  “Good,” said Blake. “Once you’ve detected another dark energy signature and have aborted time travel, prepare to detonate the kettle responsible for this other signature, which will be approximately one hundred seventy-four feet away. Detonate it exactly five seconds after you hear me say the word, mark.”

  After just the briefest of pauses, during which the computer reconfigured the outer kettle’s settings, it responded. “Understood and ready,” it said.

  “Commence time travel,” said Blake, peeking around the edge of the open trailer. Seemingly before he had even finished speaking, the K-2 kettle materialized in the midst of the oncoming horde. Blake had witnessed this kind of magic before, but it never failed to amaze.

  Far too fast for human comprehension, K-1 detected this new kettle the instant it arrived and aborted further time travel with thirty-nine millionths of a second to spare.

  The oncoming Shui Fong soldiers stopped in their tracks as the large stainless steel refrigerator appeared out of nowhere within their ranks. Many had their mouths hanging open, and all of them were too stunned by this impossible event to continue firing.

  Blake guessed that not even Confucius could hide his shock after seeing a large appliance teleport into his midst.

  The men were stunned now, but would snap out of it and continue laying down a curtain of fire any second. Blake jumped to the runway and began sprinting away from the horde, taking advantage of this momentary respite, well aware that a bullet could tear through him without warning.

  After allowing himself to work up a head of steam for three seconds, he decided he couldn’t risk waiting any longer. “Mark!” he shouted as he continued running, a word his phone relayed to K-1.

  He began a mental countdown from five seconds. Four. Three. Two. One.

  A massive explosion rocked the airport and shook the runway like an earthquake, the shockwave slamming into Blake like a giant’s fist, launching him off his feet and knocking him nearly unconscious.

  Blake came to moments later, his head and ears ringing, and struggled to gather his senses. He wanted nothing more than to lie still on the runway, moaning and licking the numerous cuts and bruises he had acquired since the attack had begun.

  Had it really been only fourteen minutes ago?

  Despite wanting desperately to rest, he conjured up his full resolve and forced himself to stand, fending off wave after wave of dizziness.

  Blake turned and grimly surveyed the destruction he had wrought, once again sickened by its necessity. His timing had been excellent. The men coming for him had all been wiped out, and while the semi had been nearer the blast than he had been, it seemed to have weathered the storm.

  Even so, it was thoroughly pockmarked by bullets, creating such a dense pattern it almost seemed as if these dents and holes had been imprinted there on purpose. Miraculously, only three of its tires were blown, turning the vehicle into a fifteen-wheeler. Given that its cargo hold was nearly empty, despite being built to carry up to forty tons, Blake guessed that it was still drivable, even on this lessor number of tires.

  He retrieved the green duffel bag Zhang had prepared for him and then scrambled back to the truck, not waiting around to learn if Shui Fong had more men beyond the blast zone. He took Zhang’s phone from his dead body so it couldn’t yield clues that would help Shui Fong find him. He then dragged the two corpses inside the trailer to its edge and pushed them unceremoniously onto the runway, before rolling down the trailer door and making his way to the cab. H
is ears were still ringing and he was still suffering through periodic bouts of dizziness.

  Thankfully, nightfall was finally arriving. He needed to get as far away from here as he could, and traveling through the night, under cover of darkness, was his only hope of not being stopped. If driving a truck that had been through a war—and looked it—wasn’t bad enough, any inspection would reveal many quarts of blood inside the trailer.

  Blake let out a sigh of relief as the truck started up and he was able to get it moving. He accelerated as quickly as he could across the runway to the airport’s main access road, swerving as he did so, possibly because he was still as addled as a drunk, or possibly due to the loss of tires.

  Once he hit the speed he wanted and was no longer accelerating, he managed to wrestle the truck to a draw and keep it on the straight and narrow—more or less.

  He made it to the road without incident. After the dramatic display of destructive power on the runway, he didn’t expect to be followed too closely, if at all. At least not by any members of Shui Fong still at the airport.

  Blake let out a string of curses he had been holding back. Arriving in Shenyang just in time for a Triad war was the epitome of bad luck. Yet he had somehow managed to do what he always did—find a way to prevail.

  Not that this was the end of it. It was only the beginning. This was shaping up to be the ultimate test of his skill.

  Blake shook his head in disgust. He had tempted fate by anticipating that the mission would be one of his smoothest ever.

  He was beginning to think that this optimistic assessment might have been a bit premature.

  21

  Colonel Li Ming bolted awake as his ringing phone finally registered in his consciousness. He accepted the call, audio only, keeping the lights off in his bedroom.

  “What’s going on, Major?” he said to his second-in-command, Long He, in the darkness, knowing that none of his underlings would be bold enough to call at this hour without very good reason.